NHS

A British-born pregnant woman who changed her surname to her husband’s Polish-origin one was forced by a hospital to prove her citizenship or be refused ante-natal care under the National Health Service (NHS), online news site Metro.co.uk (Metro) reported yesterday.

Emma Szewczak-Harris from Chesterton, a suburb of Cambridge, who is eight months pregnant, was asked to prove she was a British citizen by a letter sent from the city’s Addenbrooke Hospital, despite her still retaining her maiden name in her double-barrelled surname and having a typically English first name. The mother-to-be told Metro that the letter and actions of Addenbrooke Hospital made her feel a ‘second-class citizen’, and that it was a ‘disgrace’, especially given the fact that Szewczak-Harris was not asked for residency proof in previous appointments.

Szewczak-Harris said: “I’ve absolutely no idea why I received it other than my surname,

‘As I’m pregnant, I’m going to the hospital a lot at the moment, but no one has at any point asked for my credentials which – as a born and bred Brit – are completely sound.

‘So I’m stumped and angry that women in my condition, who are anxious enough as it is, should be made to worry about their access to care.’

After 26 years of living in the country and using the NHS, I’ve never had my identity policed until now,’

‘Am I going to go into labour and then be denied treatment?”

The letter, which was seen and shared by Metro, told Szewczak-Harris that she had failed to provide documents at her last appointment proving that she was entitled to free NHS treatment as an expectant mother, before giving a list of suitable proofs of identity and residence. It was dated October 12 and was issued by Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Furthermore, the letter demanded Szewczak-Harris supply the necessary documentation by a deadline of October 30, 2017.

A hospital spokesperson said the letter had been sent out as part of a ‘pilot scheme’ aimed at preventing patients from abroad taking advantage of NHS treatment for free and that the hospital had a policy of asking non-emergency maternal care patients to bring proof of residence with them to appointments.

A Cambridge University Hospitals spokesman said: “The Department of Health has asked the trust to pilot a scheme to allow us to better monitor and collect payment from overseas patients who are not eligible for free NHS treatment.

‘This brings us into line with national NHS guidelines and how many other trusts operate.

‘From August 1, 2017 all non-emergency patients in maternity and urology have been asked in their appointment letters to provide two forms of identification when they attend – one to prove identity and one as proof of residence. Once you have provided this information you will not be asked again.

‘If a patient is not eligible for free NHS care, they will be charged for any treatment we give to them and, from October 23, there is a statutory requirement to withhold treatment where clinical staff assess if this routine aspect of their care can wait until they return to their home country.”

Szewczak-Harris said she was not going to reply to the letter.

“What are they going to do? I’m entitled to that,” she said. “My husband is very angry about it. He has faced this kind of thing before but as someone who works in medicine on the Addenbrooke’s site, he’s horrified about it. This makes us feel like second-class citizens.”

Hospitals in England may be required to check the residency and immigration status of all patients who use their services from October 23 (tomorrow) according to campaign group Docs Not Cops. The controversial ruling on English NHS trusts could mean people unable to prove their nationality would have to pay for treatment upfront. The rule is a sign of the UK Conservative government’s hardening stance on immigration and in particular, government fears of ‘health tourists’ from outside the UK coming to the country to help themselves to free treatment.

Several of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service trusts, as well as numerous large companies across the globe are still recovering from a large-scale ‘unprecedented’ ransomware cyber attack which occurred this weekend, ReportCA.net wrote yesterday.

The ‘cyberextortion’ attack, which involved hackers accessing computers via phishing emails, and locking systems and encrypting company data, also affected numerous firms engaged in the manufacturing, finance and transport sectors. Government agencies were also caught up in the debacle. Technicians at the NHS, which offers subsidised healthcare in the U.K., scrambled to limit the spread of the ransomware, which caused problems with accessing patient data and hospital appointments, among other things. Many companies ordered their employees to disconnect their workstations from the Internet and to avoid opening emails from unfamiliar sources.

Such was the scale of this weekend’s mass attack, Microsoft was moved into changing its cybersecurity policy, making free of charge updates and patches for computers running older packages such as Windows XP, which many small and medium enterprises still rely on, due to the expense of system upgrades or lack of technical knowledge and ICT skills.

Apart from the NHS, Spain’s Telefonica and Iberdrola also reported computers being targeted. The German national railway Deutsche Ban was another victim. ReportCA.net published a photo taken by an eyewitness at Chemnitz rail station, showing a display board for train times. The screen was partly obscured by a red and white pop-up with a padlock logo, a sight reported by other victims of the attack. The hackers locked out users and demanded payment in bitcoin currency to release encrypted data. Other victims included the Russian Interior Ministry, the country’s mobile phone operators MTS and MegaFon, French car maker Renault, and football clubs in Europe. One long-established club, IF Odd, said Saturday that its online ticketing service was crippled by the ransomware.

The British home secretary Amber Rudd said that one in five of her country’s 248 NHS trusts, which manage hospitals and patient services above general practitioner level, had been hit. Thousands of patient appointments and operations, including for serious conditions, were cancelled, as medical staff were frozen out of their databases and systems. According to Rudd, 48 trusts were affected, but quick reaction times by their ICT departments meant that as of yesterday, only six were still reporting issues. The National Cyber Security Centre also stepped in to mitigate the impact of the attack.

Cybersecurity officials urged both individuals and companies to ensure they regularly update their anti-virus and security systems, enact security updates if they are Windows users and to back-up data on a separate server or in the cloud.

The source of the attack is as yet unknown, although Russian and Chinese hackers have targeted companies and governmental agencies in the West in past years. Two cybersecurity firms, Avast and Kaspersky Lab, have said that the ransomware attacked PCs in 70 countries, with Russia the most affected. There have been reports that the hackers used the WannaCry ransomware program, said to have been based on spying technology utilised by America’s NSA (National Security Agency). More than 36,000 infections were detected by yesterday. It is reported that the hackers behind ‘WannaCry’ stole the hacking tools from the NSA, which created the tool to exploit a loophole in Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

Ori Eisen, founder of Trusona cybersecurity firm in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, warned that the WannaCry attack is just the beginning and another more advanced attack could have serious and potentially lethal implications. Speaking with the Associated Press news agency, Eisen said: “This is child”s play, what happened. This is not the serious stuff yet. What if the same thing happened to 10 nuclear power plants, and they would shut down all the electricity to the grid? What if the same exact thing happened to a water dam or to a bridge?” he asked.

“Today, it happened to 10,000 computers,” Eisen said. “There”s no barrier to do it tomorrow to 100 million computers.”

Intranational policing agency Europol described the attack as at “an unprecedented level and will require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits.”

The onslaught of WannaCry was successfully halted after a 22-year-old British cybersecurity researcher, known only by his or her tag ‘MalwareTech’ accidently stumbled across a ‘kill switch’ that disabled the ransomware. By entering a nonsensical domain name, MalwareTech was able to stop the malware spreading further. He or she purchased the domain name for around £9, yet this quick thinking decision saved companies millions in potential damage control. The kill switch only worked for those not affected however, and many organisations who were already hit were forced to pay the ransom demand or call up emergency data stocks.

The Data Standards and Governance Conference, which is being scheduled for the 3rd November 2015 at Birmingham’s NEC Hall 1, will examine the issues of developing guidelines and standards for information exchange within the NHS and other health providers. The NHS holds millions of patient records, research information, study results and other significant quantities of medical data on different websites, databases and cloud services, and there are both legal and corporate protocols to be adhered to in ensuring the safety and integrity of that data.

As the NHS aims to become more environmentally friendly and carbon neutral, there is an increasing trend towards making the health service’s data more paperless. Alongside that, there is a greater emphasis on interoperability between the 15 NHS trusts, 3 foundation trusts, 16 social enterprises and over 8,000 GP practices that compose the NHS, according to figures from the NHS Confederation. The conference aims to address these issues in order for healthcare providers to adopt clear and governance initiatives to enable the safe, efficient exchange of patient data.

The conference will help attendees explore the challenges in developing standards for information exchange in the NHS as well as a look at the steps being taken to build patient trust for a patient centric health service. This is even more essential as the NHS experiences wave after wave of government cutbacks and internal reorganisation.

(c) US FDA/Wikimedia Commons

Likely conference topics will include the building of trust, patient and staff confidence through the system of information governance; creation of a patient-friendly data strategy, and the utilisation of open-source software in data governance to help reduce computing costs.

The event, which will last from 10:00 am to 4:15 pm on the first day of the EHI 2015 stream of conferences, will begin with a case study on the future of electronic patient information. This will be followed by topics on the ‘Code for Health’, working with Care.data pathfinder CCGs and the economics of open-source programs, along with a special presentation by key NHS ICT supplier Microsoft.

The Data Standards and Governance conference is one of several specialised events to be taking place at EHI 2015. Other planned events include the CCIO Annual Conference, the Health CIO Annual Conference and the HANDI Health Apps Conference, along with many other events focussing on diverse NHS technology discussions around 3D printing, big data and genomic medicine, health and social care, imaging informatics, NHS social media, cloud software and digital primary care services.

DISCLAIMER: The writer is an employee of Informa plc. which is the holding company of EHI Health, the organisers of the EHI 2015 conferences.

EHealth Media, a division of the conferences and training brand Informa, is hosting a special event for national specialists in healthcare ICT this October.

The EHI Awards is a flagship awards event within the healthcare IT calendar. This unique and well-subscribed event will bring together more than 700 information technology and clinical professionals from the National Health Service (NHS) along with suppliers of health ICT engaging their customers for a night of celebration, fun and networking.

The evening will be a celebration of the important work that people in IT and informatics help contribute to the running of British healthcare services and the vital role they maintain in enabling services and adding benefit to the NHS in particular. As the 21st century progresses, ICT and technology in general is playing an increasingly essential role to the day-to-day running of NHS front-line and administration services.

The awards will be hosted at a glamorous ballroom at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge hotel, in the centre of London on the 1st October, 2015. There will be live entertainment from a big name comedian, plus a pre-dinner drinks reception on arrival, a three course dinner, a half a bottle of wine per person, mineral water, coffee, petit fours and late evening entertainment. Attendees can reach the Park Plaza very easily from Waterloo Station and Underground, a five-minute walk away, plus easy access to local buses and taxicabs. There will also be a dinner and music as part of the entertainment.

The categories under which awards will be handed over by a celebrity host are:

Interested parties should send in their entries by Friday 15 May at 4:00 pm at the latest. The event organiser also asks that potential awards nominees attend a judging day on Wednesday 15 July 2015 at the King Power Stadium, Leicester, in order to present to the awards judges there. The event nominations are open to any healthcare IT organisation of any size based in the UK. Entry to the competition is free but tickets for the night are to be paid for.

The EHI Awards 2015 are being organised by EHealth Media in conjunction with Informa Life Sciences, a fellow division of Informa plc engaged in the provision of events and training for experts in the fields of pharmaceutics, biomedicine, and other scientific industries. Category sponsors include Dell, CGI, Lexmark Healthcare, Intersystems, IMS Maxims and General Dynamics Health Solutions.